Xbox 360 Component or VGA?

[ArchAngel777]

I am about ready to purchase an XBox 360 Premium system. I know that it comes with the component cable, however, it is my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) that it will only do 480p, 720p or 1080i. The VGA cable, on the other hand was capable of all sorts of different resolutions (720 X 480, 1280 X 720, 1280 X 768, 1366 X 768, etc...).

My LCD-TV is not 720p (768p), but it can handle a 720p signal. However, it is my understanding the the my LCD will stretch a 720p signal to 768p, thus throwing diminishing some image quality. Does the VGA cable avoid this? I believe it does, but I wanted to post it here with the experts before I spend $40 on the VGA cable.

Thanks to anyone who can confirm this...

 

[Josh123]

I to am wondering about this. I have a HDTV that is native at 1366 x 768 and plan on buying a 360 sometime in the future.

 

[MrWizzard]

Only reason I see out there to get the VGA cables is if you are hooking up to a Monitor that does not have component or you must have 1080P.

Otherwise the VGA cables are a drop in quality for the signal. I have tested 2 xboxes on 2 completely different TVs. The VGA seem to be more washed out color wise if that?s all you have then you probably will not notice much.

If I were you, I would go with the component, the loss in color is not worth the few extra pixels 720p to 768p, I actually stick with component over a VGA 1080P because I see such a difference in color, that and most of the games are not running in 1080P native yet.

Other reason you might want to do VGA is if you are going to do the HD-DVD thing but you don?t have a 1080p set so like I said, if I were you I would go with component.

Edit Josh123 I have a LCD that does that res and I still would choose the component over VGA after comparing the two.

EDIT 2 GMtheBest is right component can do 1080P but more 1080p TVs support 1080P over VGA/DVI/HDMI before they support 1080p over component.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: MrWizzard
Only reason I see out there to get the VGA cables is if you are hooking up to a Monitor that does not have component or you must have 1080P.

Otherwise the VGA cables are a drop in quality for the signal. I have tested 2 xboxes on 2 completely different TVs. The VGA seem to be more washed out color wise if that?s all you have then you probably will not notice much.

If I were you, I would go with the component, the loss in color is not worth the few extra pixels 720p to 768p, I actually stick with component over a VGA 1080P because I see such a difference in color, that and most of the games are not running in 1080P native yet.

Other reason you might want to do VGA is if you are going to do the HD-DVD thing but you don?t have a 1080p set so like I said, if I were you I would go with component.

Edit Josh123 I have a LCD that does that res and I still would choose the component over VGA after comparing the two.

Thanks for the information. Then one last thing... It sounds like your LCD wasn't scaling the 720p to 768p... Can you confirm this? Because if it just has a small black bar on top and bottom, then I could care less. I just don't want my LCD scaling that 720p signal to fill the screen.

 

[MrWizzard]

ArchAngel777

Thanks for the information. Then one last thing... It sounds like your LCD wasn't scaling the 720p to 768p... Can you confirm this? Because if it just has a small black bar on top and bottom, then I could care less. I just don't want my LCD scaling that 720p signal to fill the screen.

I wish I could answer that question, but it really varies from LCD to LCD. Weather or not you can tell it to stretch the image or not for which signals seems to change from LCD to LCD.

I personally would stretch because I am willing to sacrifice a little image quality to ensure equal burn out of the entire LCD. With the amount I game it could happen. If that happened then the bars that are normally black when I play the 360. Would be brighter than the rest of the LCD when I watched a movie or something from another source that used the whole TV. Might not be an issue to you but then again it could.

You might have to do a little more research on your TV to figure out what it will do and what you can make it do with different signals. You could test it by hooking up your pc and outputting that resolution to your LCD, but be careful if you do this to make sure you have the refresh rates set correctly if you are forcing your video card to do unnatural resolutions.

 

[GMtheBest]

I have a true 1080p tv (non upconverting) my XBOX360 does 1080p over component. The VGA cable does indeed make the colors washed out but produces a sharper picture.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: GMtheBest
I have a true 1080p tv (non upconverting) my XBOX360 does 1080p over component. The VGA cable does indeed make the colors washed out but produces a sharper picture.

Hmmm sharper picture versus colors... Since LCD's colors are not great to begin with, I am sure I would opt for the VGA cable then, if I decided to spend the money on it.

 

[Josh123]

Originally posted by: MrWizzard
Only reason I see out there to get the VGA cables is if you are hooking up to a Monitor that does not have component or you must have 1080P.

Otherwise the VGA cables are a drop in quality for the signal. I have tested 2 xboxes on 2 completely different TVs. The VGA seem to be more washed out color wise if that?s all you have then you probably will not notice much.

If I were you, I would go with the component, the loss in color is not worth the few extra pixels 720p to 768p, I actually stick with component over a VGA 1080P because I see such a difference in color, that and most of the games are not running in 1080P native yet.

Other reason you might want to do VGA is if you are going to do the HD-DVD thing but you don?t have a 1080p set so like I said, if I were you I would go with component.

Edit Josh123 I have a LCD that does that res and I still would choose the component over VGA after comparing the two.

EDIT 2 GMtheBest is right component can do 1080P but more 1080p TVs support 1080P over VGA/DVI/HDMI before they support 1080p over component.

Thanks for the info. Second question, if my LCD doesn't support 1080p do I even need the HD-DVD drive that Microsoft offers or should I just use an upconverting dvd player with HDMI?